Operation: Potential
by JoeB1451
Summary: Sector V was in a tight spot, but with the return of a missing friend, it might get tighter.  BuffyKND


Operation: Potential

or

Previous  
Operatives  
Transition  
Nicely  
To  
Instructing  
Allied  
Learners

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Buffy belongs to Mutant Enemy. Kids Next Door belongs to Curious Pictures. I make no profit off of the following.

The following happens a couple of weeks after Chosen, and in the KND's twelfth year.

Authors Note: Thanks to StorytellerSJK for coming up with the anagram in the title

Story Starts Here 

Numbuh One was in a tight spot. Well, if truth be told, his whole team was in one. Not that this was anything new. What was new was that he didn't see a way out of it. It hadn't always been like this, at one point it seemed he and his team was both inseparable and invincible.

This had changed about four months ago when Numbuh Five, his second in command, had dropped her sister Cree off at the local emergency room with a stab wound in her abdomen then disappeared off the face of the Earth. The two were known not to get along and the local police had written it off as a sibling spat that had gotten out of hand and that Abigail Lincoln, Numbuh Five, had panicked after stabbing her sister and had run away.

The only problem with this theory is that Abigail Lincoln was an agent for the Kids Next Door, a secret organization made up of kids to fight adult tyranny. That she and Cree had been fighting wasn't much of a surprise. Cree had been an agent for the organization until she had hit thirteen; an age that agents were routinely decommissioned and their memories were altered to remove their time with the organization. Cree however had defected to avoid this fate and had become a major thorn in the KND's side. It seemed sometimes that Numbuh Five and Cree had a major dust up at least once a week. Numbuh One had a difficult time believing that Numbuh Five would have felt the need to stab her sister; well at least if she had she certainly would not of dragged her to the hospital. He also believed that if that had happened she wouldn't have run, stealing a shuttle pod and disappearing. They were good enough friends that she would have come to her team for help. That she hadn't indicated that something really bad was going on.

He had presented his case to High Command, but that had not stopped them from issuing a 'Decommission on Sight' order for her. His pleas for them not to replace her on the team had also fallen on deaf ears. So over the last four months they had been gifted with, in succession, Numbuh Six, Seven, and Eight, and from the looks of things, Numbuh Nine was in the cards, Numbuh Eight was unconscious in the corner where he had fainted, behind what had his team in the aforementioned tight spot.

"So, Numbuh Vone, I see you are a little short…., handed that is! Hah, Hah, Hah!" Spankula, in a very bad Transylvanian accent, chortled at his own joke. "A pity, I vould have enjoyed giving Numbuh Five the spanking she deserves too!" Spankula's claim to fame was that he was a strong supporter of corporal punishment, and if this wasn't bad enough getting a spanking from him could turn you into a spanker too.

"Yah know Spanky," A half forgotten voice said out of the darkness. "You should be careful what you wish for, you might get it."

Spankula turned and smiled as a slim black girl stepped out of the shadows, "Ah Numbuh Five!" He chortled with glee, "I was just talking about you to Numbuh One."

"Yeah, I heard. But I don't go by Numbuh Five much anymore. Mostly when I'm working, I just go by Abigail."

Spankula looked like he was about to comment on this when the single name registered and he started to look a little nervous, one hand loosening his collar as a bead of sweat broke out on his forehead, "Ah, vould there be a title after that?"

Abigail nodded and a feral grin lit her face, her eyes promising awful things that she would immensely enjoy doing to him.

Spankula gulped, then turning he leapt to Numbuh One's side and grabbing his hand he began giving it a vigorous shaking, "Well, Numbuh Vone, it was fun, but I just remembered that I have somevhere I really have to be, so I'll have to take a rain check on everything. See you around."

As soon as he was finished speaking he ran and dived out of an open window.

For a moment everyone just stared out the window that Spankula had jumped out of, then turned and looked at each other, the silence was broken when Numbuh Four, or Wallabe Beatles screamed, "Numbuh Five! Your back!" And launching himself grabbed her around the waist, which was about as high on her as he could reach, in a fierce hug.

"Where have you been?" Numbuh Three, a thin oriental girl with straight black hair asked in a conversational voice, then in a much more exasperated one, "We've been looking for you everywhere!" But she too came over and gave Numbuh Five a hug.

"It's good to see you, especially with what ever you did to run Spanky off," Hoggie Gilligan, or Numbuh Two said. Numbuh Two was a stocky kid, shorter than Numbuh Five, who was wearing an old aviators helmet on his head.

Finally Nigel Uno, Numbuh One, a short bald kid, with black wrap around sunglasses, wearing a red shirt and khaki shorts, "Welcome home, Numbuh Five. I'll see about getting that decommissioning order rescinded," he said in an English accent.

Abigail stared at the offered hand with great longing. Instead of taking the hand she looked at ex-team leader's face and said sadly, "Numbuh Five isn't coming back Nigel."

"What!" Came out of four throats, clearly not believing what they were hearing.

"I can't do this anymore Nigel, I've… I've seen too much," she tried to explain.

"I don't understand Numbuh Five," Numbuh one said, "Why did you come back then?"

"Not that we don't appreciate it Numbuh Five," Numbuh Two said glancing back over his shoulder at the window Spankula had jumped out of.

"I need to talk some things over with you," Abigail explained.

Nigel nodded, "Right, lets break out some root beer and talk about this."

Ten minutes later they were seated in the tree house's living area, each with a cold bottle of root beer in hand, "Alright Numbuh Five, perhaps you can tell us where you have been these last months."

Abigail took a long swig of her soda, and then began, "Cree and I went to the park to talk."

Numbuh Four frowned, "You two went to the park to talk?"

"Yeah Wally, we do do that sometimes. If all we did was shoot at each other the parents might notice.

"We were there awhile and conversation was started to get a little heated, when this guy dressed in robes jumped out of the bushes and tried to stab me!"

Every one gasped. "Are you sure they weren't after Cree?" Nigel asked. "After all she does seem to be the one who ended up with the wound."

"No they were after me, she was ignored until she stepped up and got involved in the fight."

Hoogie looked the most surprised, "Your sister was hurt defending you?"

"Yeah, I have to admit I was a little surprised myself, but as she explained it when she got involved, 'If anyone is going to kill that little pain, it's going to be me!"

Everyone laughed, as the universe snapped back into its correct shape.

"We took down most of them, that's when one of the things got lucky and got Cree in the gut. Fortunately I was able to handle the rest."

Nigel, who was always good at picking up nuances, asked, "Things?"

"Yeah, things. Their proper name, I found out later, is a Bringer, or a Harbinger. They work for a big creep called The First Evil."

"Sort of like Father?" Numbuh Three asked, in a joking tone.

Abigail turned grim, "No, Kookie, Father doesn't even rate on this thing's chart. "

All four of the KND agents gulped, the only thing they knew of that trumped Father, was Grandfather.

"Why did this thing want you dead?" Nigel asked.

"That will take a little explaining I'm afraid. It will be easier to explain if I keep it in order."

Nigel nodded then for her to go on.

"Once I finished the last one off I could see that Cree was hurt bad. I managed to drop her off at the Emergency room. I knew I had to get to a place called Sunnnydale in California, don't ask me how I knew, but I did, so I stole a shuttle pod and headed out."

"Why didn't you come to us?" Numbuh Two asked, "We're a team, we could have helped.

Abigail took a swig from her bottle to buy some time, "Hoogie, I just knew that this was something that I couldn't involve you guys in. That if I did you all would have gotten killed, I… I just couldn't do it to you."

"Sunnydale," Nigel mused, rubbing his chin with his right hand, "Wasn't that the town that sank a couple of months back?"

"Yeah," Abigail nodded.

"You sank a town?" Numbuh Four asked in awed voice.

"Wasn't me specifically, but it was us that was the cause of it."

"How?" Hogie asked, excited. "Did you take notes?"

"Forget notes!" Wally exclaimed, "Did you take video?"

"I was a little busy Wally, and, I'm getting ahead of myself again, just hold on, and I'll get to that part," Abigail said crossly.

"Anyway, I got to Sunnydale and landed outside of town. I followed my nose and ended up at this house, I _knew _I was in the right place so I just went in. As I was walking through door this blonde lady was giving a speech, the part I heard was, 'Are you ready to be strong?'" So I said, "Hell, yeah."

Abigail got up and started pacing, Nigel noticed that her energy level was up, considering how 'on the go' Numbuh Five had always been, that was scary. "The lady's name was Buffy Summers, she was what's called a Vampire Slayer. It seems a long , long time ago; people were getting munched on by monsters right and left. A couple of wizards got together and turned a girl into the First Slayer. When she died some other girl got picked out of all of the girls that were potential Slayers.

"You were a potential," Nigel guessed.

Abigail nodded, "This First Evil thing decided to end the Slayer Line, and was killing off potentials, that's why I was attacked. He would kill off all of the potentials, then Faith, then Buffy. Poof, no more Slayers."

"Faith?" Kookie asked.

"The other Slayer," Abigail explained as she went for another bottle of root beer.

Hoogie scratched his head; "You said there was only one Slayer at a time?"

"Yeah, but Buffy died when she was sixteen, her buddy performed CPR and brought her back, but she was dead long enough for another Slayer to be called."

"Faith?" Nigel guessed.

"Naw, a girl named Kendra, she lasted about a year. That's when Faith was called."

"So Faith died in the fight in Sunnydale and you were tapped?" Nigel asked. If she had this mystical destiny maybe he could still get the order rescinded. This Slayer thing sounded pretty powerful, and he'd love to get one on his team.

"No, Nigel. A powerful witch by the name of Willow Rosenberg activated all of the Slayers, everywhere. There are no more Potentials. Which brings me to why I came. So far we've found two hundred and thirty seven Slayers. Eighteen of them are under thirteen. They already are starting to call them 'Junior Slayers'," She said making air quotes around 'Junior Slayers'.

The four KND operatives growled.

"What I'd like you to do is defect with me. All of us hit our twelfth birthday this year. All of us have less than a year as a KND operative before we are decommissioned. I've been through that once; I don't want to repeat it. That's what I went into the park to talk to Cree about."

"You want us to defect?" Nigel asked, clearly not comfortable with the thought.

"Yeah Nigel, I do. If Buffy and the adults in the Watchers Council have their way, they'll take the younger Slayers and stick them somewhere till they hit eighteen before they let us do anything. They'll give us a old fogy Watcher that's going to be more interested in making sure we wash behind our ears than seeing we are properly trained and get some mission time. What I'd like is for the four of you to join up as watchers, they already know about the KND, I sort of had to tell them about it and show them the shuttle pod to get them to let me go with them for the final fight so we don't have to worry about that, and I know you guys would give the Kid Slayers a chance. So what do you say?" Abigail finished and looked at her four teammates expectantly, hope and fear in equal measure on her face.

"Let me get this straight," Nigel began. "You want us to quit the KND, join an organization that is run by adults that is already planning on oppressing kids, for the sole purpose of making sure that these kids are given a fair shake, making us all number one targets of a world wide intelligence agency. An Agency that will make us their primary target, and will stop at nothing to make sure we are decommissioned before we can spill the beans on them."

Abigail looked glum, but nodded.

"I can't speak for any of the others," Nigel began, "But where do I sign up?" Abigail smiled as she was tackled by her four teammates, just this once she went down under them. It felt good to be home.


End file.
